Kosi floods: no lessons learnt

"Nobody from the government has gone to Saharsa so far. If the people in Saharsa are surviving, they must be saying that we are engulfed in water since ten days and nobody is there to think about us. This is quite worrisome. I will suggest that we must try to look after those surviving there. We must try to save them, whether by boats or a helicopter….. The flood in Saharsa is not a flood, this is unprecedented….we cannot call it a flood, it is a deluge," said Jagannath Mishra, former Chief Minister of Bihar. But he was not talking about the floods of August 2008 in Bihar. He was making a speech in the Bihar Vidhan Sabha on 13 September 1984 about a similar incident that took place on the 5 September 1984 near Navhatta in Saharsa district of north Bihar when the Kosi had breached its embankment 75 km south of the much-talked about Bhimnagar Barrage just as it happened at Kusaha this year.  Obviously, the powers-that-be refuse to learn from past mistakes and their executive wing, the Water Resources Department, is immune to any criticism. The 1984 incident had uprooted nearly half a million people from their homes and hearths and engulfed 96 villages spread over seven blocks in Saharsa and Supaul districts. They could return to their homes only after the Holi festival in March 1985. 

The Kosi embankment (locally called the eastern afflux bund) was breached near the Kusaha village in Nepal, turning four Panchayats of Nepal into a watery grave. These Panchayats are Western Kusaha, Sripur, Haripur and Laukahi with a population of nearly 35,000. Counting the number of villages trapped in floodwaters in Bihar continues. Supaul, Saharsa, Araria, Purnea, Katihar, and Khagaria had to bear the brunt of the unexpected floods. According to official sources nearly 35 lakh people have been hit by the floods in these districts. Nearly three lakh people have been evacuated from the engulfed areas. Relief operations are reported to be picking up for the survivors and so are the rescue operations. Unless marooned people are reached, relief operations carry little meaning. The relief that is reaching the people is not adequate as they were already braving the floods for about a fortnight without any external assistance.